Ronaldo Lising a Vancouver member of the Hells Angels is led into the Main Street police station by a member after police scooped up a number of members of the motorcycle gang in 1998.Ward Perrin
/ Vancouver Sun Files

The federal government is denying that the rights of full-patch Hells Angel Ronaldo Lising were violated when some of his calls were intercepted and recorded while he was jailed at Mission Institution last year.

In a recently filed statement of defence, the deputy attorney general of Canada also refutes Lising’s claim that he should get $925,000 in compensation because some of the intercepted calls were between him and his lawyers.

Lising filed a suit in the Federal Court of Canada in September, claiming the intercepts of his calls violated both the Criminal Code and the Charter of Rights and that he should be compensated — $500,000 in general damages and $425,000 in punitive damages.

Lising is currently on day parole serving the remainder of an 11-year, nine-month sentence for a series of offences, including drug trafficking, firearms possession and contempt of court.

The government’s response to Lising, filed late last month, says that even if privileged calls were recorded, “the Defendant says that they were made inadvertently and were not further reviewed, accessed for playback, listened to or otherwise scrutinized.”

“The Defendant denies that any of the plaintiff’s Charter rights to which he was entitled were violated,” the defence documents say.

Nor has Lising “suffered any compensable damage, injury, loss or expense,” said lawyer Curtis Workun, representing the federal government and Mission Institution.

And the statement of defence says prison officials were working “in good faith and without malice” at the time the intercepts were made.

Mission Institution officials obtained an order to bug Lising’s calls on April 1, 2011 after receiving information that he was under threat. He was notified of the interceptions on June 20, 2011.

In Lising’s original claim, he said prison staff placed him in involuntary segregation after overhearing him talking to his wife on the phone about threats to his safety.

His wife then filed an Access to Information request related to the intercepted calls, and last December received a CD containing 555 recorded calls over a 10-week period in 2011. Eighty-five of the calls were between Lising and his lawyers Donna Turko, Greg DelBigio and Martin Peters, according to Lising’s claim.

Last week, the Parole Board of Canada decided to continue Lising’s day parole, which was granted to him last May with several special conditions.

He is still prohibited from associating with any Hells Angels or hang-arounds and prospects in the biker gang program. He can’t “wear or display his Hells Angels colours or any insignia indicating membership in or support for Hells Angels motorcycle clubs,” the parole board ruling says.

Nor can he attend clubhouses or Hells Angels events or enter any drinking establishment.

The board noted that Lising remains a full-patch Hells Angels in the Nomads chapter.

“Your membership in the Hells Angels continues to be a concern, but there is no indication that you have breached your special conditions to avoid criminals and gang members and to curtail your interaction with said group,” the Nov. 6 ruling says.

“Your file information describing your behavior in the community during your present period of day parole is overall positive ... You are reported to be making positive progress in your reintegration into a law-abiding society and your potential for reintegration is still assessed as being high. There is no information to indicate that you have returned to criminal behavior.”

Lising’s convictions stem from the special undercover investigation dubbed E-Pandora that used agent Michael Plante to infiltrate the East End chapter of the Hells Angels.

When Lising’s house was raided in July 2005, police found “handguns, ammunition, a pen gun capable of single-shot fire, body armour, brass knuckles and what was described as an abduction kit, which contained a balaclava, gloves, walkie talkies and plastic zap straps,” the parole documents noted.

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